Kalecko part two. After the great success of the first album, Dota musically dedicates herself again to the poems of the poetess.
Mascha Kaléko began writing in the 1920s in Berlin, and from 1929 onwards, she published in newspapers; her early poems are pointed sketches of everyday life in Berlin. She makes a name for herself, socializing with the greats of the Berlin Bohemia at the Romanische Café. In 1933, her first book "Das lyrische Stenogrammheft" is published and meets with great acclaim. Her success as a writer abruptly ends with the Nazis' rise to power. As a Jew, she is no longer allowed to publish. In 1938, she leaves Berlin, but the city remains a constant reference point for her. In one of her last poems called Bleibtreu, she writes, "40 years ago I lived here [...] Here was my happiness at home. And my distress. Here my child was born. And had to leave. Here, my friends and the Gestapo visited me," concluding with the question, "What remained of it? [...] an old wound unhealed."
Dota Kehr is from Berlin, writes lyrics, sings, and has been making music since 2003 with drummer Janis Görlich and guitarist Jan Rohrbach. In the meantime, they have released 16 albums and played countless tours domestically and internationally.
Dota strikes the nerve of her time, or rather several, with her music that hops and dances, pauses, jumps off the lido pier, swims and dives, to the bottom, which is also the title of one of her most beautiful songs. She mixes folk and indietronica and occasionally lets her love for Brazilian music shine through.
Her lyrics touch through immediacy; Dota does not speak from an ivory tower, but about the people here and now, their small triumphs and great abysses, their inadequacies, trying to connect closely and move in society.
She wins the Fred Jay Prize and the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, writing unintentional small anthems, racing bike for all lovers in the metropolis, no time for the movement of climate protests.
She releases album after album, always believing her best song is still ahead of her; she earns the title of hardest touring woman in German show business, performing with her band and in a duo with Jan Rohrbach on guitar.
At one of the concerts, a fan slips her a small book, author: Mascha Kaléko. Dota is thrilled by the directness of the poems, the succinctness of the language, and makes plans to turn the texts into music. She obtains permission from Kaléko's estate manager and asks fellow songwriters if they want to participate. Everyone is enthusiastic, resulting in this album featuring songs sung solely by Dota, but also duets with old and new voices in the German music landscape, such as Alin Coen, Hannes Wader, Max Prosa, and Konstantin Wecker. The album is released in 2020 and stays in the album charts for 8 weeks, a success. The tour for it takes place in 2022 due to pandemic-related delays but is celebrated all the more by the audience.
That Dota has taken up Kaléko's poems and created songs from them is a stroke of luck. Like Dota, Kaléko does not write about myths and distant spheres, but about people; Kaléko talks about public health patients, and Dota about pregnant women in the hardware store. Thus, it is no wonder that Dota found it easy to lend her voice to these related texts. Dota and her band have given the poems an additional layer, new colors, sometimes contrasting them with the text, and have achieved the feat that while listening to the songs, one never thinks of lyrics with musical accompaniment. Dota has rescued Mascha Kaléko's texts into our time; even more: they sound as if they were written now, in this form.
And of course, there was much more to discover in Kaléko's poetry anthologies, essays, mixed notes, and diary entries. Enough for a second album, again with familiar collaborators. This time, the music fits even better, the texts of Kaléko move naturally and freely within it, sometimes in classic song form with verses and chorus, sometimes a line is repetitively invoked until everyone has pinned the phrase to their fridge: "How beautiful it is to be alone."
Since September 2023, DOTA has been on tour. With them: Dota Kehr (vocals, guitar), Janis Görlich (drums), Jan Rohrbach (guitar), Jonas Hauer (keyboards), and Maria Schneider (vibraphone, percussion, vocals).
Songs from both Kalecko albums and some pieces by the band with their own lyrics will be performed. Acoustic, concert-like, and captivating.
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
